There must be some social value in our system of separating personal liability from corporate liability, but it seems to me the balance has gotten dysfunctionally lost.

This case is similar in some respects to strip-mining investors who for generations made billions of dollars by creating a toxic mess, declaring bankruptcy and foisting the cleanup bill on the taxpayers, then turning around and doing it again.

If there is a lesson to be learned in the Purdue Pharma case, it’s that our system is structured to avoid responsibility for disastrous corporate outcomes.

I believe you’re right that the DOJ played crony politics here, but our corporate liability laws need to be rebalanced so that isn’t so easy.